Love and Grief
by Tulipa
Summary: Drabble about how buffy and spike grieve


Disclaimer: BtVS or any of its characters belong to Joss and not me.  
  
Love, Grief and A Ring..  
  
She grabbed his hand desperately as it began to glow, and she was hit by his everything. Afterwards when she would remember back it stuck out in her mind and always brought her to tears to remember his own way of grieving for his lost love when she felt the same way except she had nothing to hold onto except memories.  
  
He always approached her room warily. It had been two months and he was holding true to his word, he would protect Dawn until the day death came to greet him. After a few weeks of living with her and the witch in her house (he couldn't bear to think of it as anyone else's) he realised how her room had become taboo. Yet he couldn't bring himself to leave it alone, always coming to stand in the doorway to breathe in that elusive and sadly fading scent of her.  
  
One fateful day when he couldn't stand it anymore, the curiosity and longing to go in there was again tormenting him. So he crossed the threshold, simply placed his combat boot onto her soft carpet and fell in love all over again. She smiled out at him from her mirror from the pictures that adorned it. Genuine smiles in some when she was young and hadn't been wearied by all the pain of life. He crossed to the photos lining her shelf, they seemed to be in chronological order, and so he saw her before she was the Slayer as an innocent, then as the witty girl surrounded by the whelp and Red. They furthered along her life, a trail of a fake smile. He traced over the largest an 8x10 of her in all her strength and beauty. He longed to feel her, any part even if it meant her fists breaking his nose yet again. Anything real, rather than the cool glass beneath his fingertips. Cursing his allergies he moved away.  
  
He could almost feel her, for all she was surrounded him. The closet full of scraps of cloth she called 'clothes' or her desk littered with knick- knacks. He paused at her desk, running his hands over the smooth wood. He stood for a moment purely remembering her before curiosity once again overcame him and he opened the top drawer. There were old papers and as he rifled through a few stakes and bottles of holy water. He smirked; there was the Slayer for you, mixing her everyday life and the Chosen one she became at night. The next drawer down had a few CD's and what seemed to be letters. He scowled recognizing his Sire's handwriting and pffed at what was apparently a love letter from Captain Cardboard. He paused for a moment and scribbled something on a scrap, trying to place himself among those who had held a part of her.  
  
At the last drawer he paused, sure he had felt something utterly familiar scratch at his mind but he dismissed it, pulling the drawer open with a flourish eager to see what she had to hide if anything. He sat shocked and stared into it sure he was hallucinating. There was a mess of photos, a piece of scrap paper and a silver ring. Staring out from the photos were them, together during Red's "Will be done" spell. While he remembered the photos but couldn't believe that she had developed them. They smiled as if they were all that mattered in the world and as if they truly were in love. Tears sprang and this time he couldn't convince himself it was allergies. He pocketed the paper, a draft of their invitation, one photo of them locked in a passionate embrace taken by his hand and the other of them smiling while she took it. He also grabbed the ring, an old one of his that had become a makeshift engagement ring. He took one last look at the room, at her, then he let go.  
  
He treasured those four pieces of impossible love for as long as he could until he realised he was ruining the photos and paper with too much wear. The ring became his symbol. When she came back, the first time he realised that he had another chance he had it engraved. However, he could never find a time to give it to her, too busy shagging or fighting or trying to impress her first. He never knew though that she found the small piece of paper with "...I love you because I know no other way..." Will. She could only guess at where her keepsakes had gone.  
  
The last image ,and one she would hold onto forever, that he gave her before he saved her once again was that of his love, grief and a Gothic ring with the fading words Buffy Conquered and William Loved.  
  
A/N Please r and r and no flames. Oh and quote from Neruda's Sonnet #17 


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